Teachers have been getting a lot of bad press lately. A great deal of pressure and demand has been put on them to make miracles happen. The word is out that, as teachers, they are largely responsible for educating millions of children who show up for school unprepared and disadvantaged in numerous ways, and poof! that in overcrowded outdated classrooms settings, with all sorts of discipline issues and underfunded programs, they can get them to pass tests that will indicate success or not.
So now we have teachers all over the country who are taking the fall and teaching to the tests and pressured to get high results out of their students or else. In my day this would have been unheard of. In my day, teachers were respected, admired, and fully in charge. That’s not to say that everyone was perfect. We had our duds, but in my day kids didn’t have so many other distractions, and also came largely from homes where education and moving forward was a priority.
On Sept. 11, 2001 many of us had children who had just gotten to school and for many in the public system it was the second day of the new school year. They were with their teachers in these classrooms when the planes hit the towers.
Hindsight tells us what happened that day and of course we’ve had time to reflect and to listen and learn who and what and how the day unraveled. At the time, however, no one really knew what was happening, and that was pretty scary stuff. It was scary for everyone, and it was especially scary for children and their teachers who were in close proximity to the disaster and it’s aftermath of confusion and debris. It was also scary for us parents whose children were in their schools, and it changed a lot of our choices and behavior forever regarding their safety.
In this issue, our BACK TO SCHOOL annual, we take the time and space to honor the memory of that day and all the souls whose lives were lost and their families, by remembering through the eyes of two New York City teachers what the day and the moment was like for them and the children in their care.
Laura Varoscak was teaching a few blocks away in TriBeCa and Wanda Troy was in the downtown Brooklyn Boerum Hill section at PS 261. Each of them has contributed their memories of that day and how they and the children reacted to the events around them and how they, as the professionals they are, took care of, and informed our children of what was taking place, and how they helped get them safely back to their homes and their worried families.
Teachers are heroes every day. This was just one of them. From our hearts we honor them.
Have a great school year! Thanks for reading!
